Marin video game companies score big sales; but Newtown shooting raises questions about violence in games

VIDEO GAME production, a burgeoning sector of Marin's economy, is finding itself a target of Washington legislators concerned about the effect that violent games may have on young users.

As part of his response to the massacre in Newtown, President Obama has asked Congress to provide $10 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the potential link between violent video games and real-life crime. And Jim Matheson, a Democratic Congressman from Utah, has introduced a bill that would ban the sale of violent video games to minors — even though attempts to regulate video games in the past have failed due to Constitutional legal challenges.

Recently, Marin County District Attorney Ed Berberian urged residents to turn in "ultra violent" video games as part of the gun buyback program he mounted. Only one person responded, turning in two games.

"I was trying to see if we could get some of that material out of the homes as well," Berberian said. "I've seen some of that material, and it just totally dehumanizes the taking of life."

Digital filmmaking, a category that includes video game production, is one of four sectors that the Marin Economic Forum has targeted for promotion in coming years. The forum is a public-private partnership created in 2010 to foster local economic growth.

Professor Robert Eyler, the forum's CEO and head of the economics department at Sonoma State University, said video games production is "part of the targeted industry structure — for sure."

"The core of video games at this point is animation programming," Eyler said. "That is why the two (video games and digital filmmaking) walk parallel lines."

Eyler said video game companies have been attracted to Marin due to the number of talented programmers here; many of these programmers formerly worked with Lucasfilm Ltd. or LucasArts Entertainment, George Lucas' video game company, before the companies were relocated to the Presidio's Letterman Digital Arts Center in 2005.

Two of Marin's video game companies — Telltale Games and Nihilistic Software — were founded by former employees of LucasArts Entertainment. In addition, two large video game companies — Take-Two Interactive, based in New York City, and Activision Blizzard, based in Santa Monica — have sizable development studios in Novato. None of the executives of these companies, including LucasArts Entertainment, were willing to be interviewed for this article.

After Obama announced his gun control proposal, which included money for studying violent video games, the Entertainment Software Association, which speaks for the video game industry, issued a statement that emphasized: "Scientific research and international and domestic crime data all point toward the same conclusion: entertainment does not cause violent behavior in the real world."

The next day the association responded to Rep. Matheson's bill, which would make it illegal to sell or rent video games with a rating of "Adults Only" to anyone under 18, or video games rated "Mature" to anyone under 17. The association stated that "this type of legislation was already ruled unconstitutional and is a flawed approach. Empowering parents, not enacting unconstitutional legislation, is the best way to control the games children play."

But James Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media, which reviews video games for parents and has pushed in the past for a law banning sales of violent video games to minors, said in addition to legislation, political leaders need to put more pressure on video game company executives to regulate themselves.

"We believe you have to start with more responsible behavior by the industry leaders," Steyer said. "To date we've seen virtually nothing from the video game industry.

"It's all about money and profits," Steyer said. "All of these companies are making billions — not millions — of dollars of profits from violent games. This is their bread and butter."

Although Telltale started out producing mild video games such as "Sam & Max," it has scored its biggest hit with "The Walking Dead," an episodic point-and-click, role-playing game about flesh-eating zombies. The game is based on a popular comic book of the same name that has also become a hit cable TV series.

In the first "The Walking Dead" video game, players assume the role of Lee Everett, a university professor who murdered his wife after she slept with another man. As players progress through the story, they are presented with action choices. According to the Entertainment Software Rating Board, a nonprofit created by the video games industry to evaluate what age group games are appropriate for, sometimes these choices lead to the death of characters. In addition to zombies, those deaths include innocent humans including young children.

The board states that some sequences "depict intense violence: a woman shooting herself in the head; a man's leg getting amputated with an ax; a man cutting off his own arm; zombies attacking, disemboweling victims. In some sequences, players use realistic firearms or other objects (e.g., hammer and pitchfork) to kill zombies and other human survivors. These sequences are sometimes accompanied by realistic gunfire, screams of pain, and large splashes of blood." The game is rated "Mature," suitable for ages 17 and up.

Last month, Telltale Games CEO Dan Connors told the Wall Street Journal that his company's "The Walking Dead" game had racked up approximately $40 million in sales, so far.

Nihilistic Software, which has produced such titles as "Zombie Apocalypse," announced in October that it was changing its name to nStigate Games and reorganizing to focus on downloadable, online and mobile games. In "Zombie Apocalypse," players kill waves of zombies and are awarded points based on the number of kills made.

Take-Two is the maker of the "Grand Theft Auto" series of video games, which are infamous for their violence and sexual content. Activision Blizzard's titles include "Call Of Duty: Black Ops II," a wartime role-playing video game that is reported to have been among those played by Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter; Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage in Norway in 2011 told authorities he honed his shooting skills by playing many hours of "Call of Duty."

Activision Blizzard's CEO Bobby Kotick told reporters in December that "Call of Duty: Black Ops II" had produced more than $1 billion in sales within two weeks of its release and that sales for the "Call of Duty" franchise had exceeded worldwide theatrical box office receipts for "Harry Potter" and "Star Wars," the two most successful movie franchises of all time.

The Entertainment Software Association says that the Entertainment Software Rating Board, a nonprofit that it established in 1994, assigns ratings for video games so parents can make informed choices. Critics, however, note that the system is entirely voluntary, and it is retailers alone who decide whether to sell violent or sexually explicit games to minors.

The association is also quick to point out that in 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, struck down a law passed by the California Legislature and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which would have required the labeling of violent video games and prohibited their sale or rental to minors. The law defined as violent any game in which the range of options available to players included killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being.

In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively."

Rebecca Jeschke, a spokesperson for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said, "No court has upheld any kind of speech restriction on a violent video game. It's pretty clearly protected speech under the First Amendment."

The California legislation was authored by State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who worked as a child psychologist before entering politics. Adam Keigwin, Yee's chief of staff, said backers of the law understood from the start that it wouldn't be possible to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship between violent video games and violent acts.

"Just like there is not a cause and effect relationship when it comes to smoking and cancer," Keigwin said, "not every single person who smokes gets cancer."

The law was supported by the California Psychiatric Association, California Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

When the Supreme Court was considering the case in 2010, over 100 researchers, scientists, and scholars from around the world endorsed a statement that included: "Overall, the research data conclude that exposure to violent video games causes an increase in the likelihood of aggressive behavior. The effects are both immediate and long-term. Violent video games have also been found to increase aggressive thinking, aggressive feelings, physiological desensitization to violence and to decrease pro-social behavior."

As for the industry's voluntary rating system, Keigwin said Yee's bill may never have passed in the Legislature if a controversy hadn't erupted at the time over a scene depicting sexual intercourse in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." The game had been rated "Mature," suitable for ages 17 and up, instead of "Adults Only," for adults age 18 and up.

"We had always argued that the industry never used an Adults Only rating because Walmart wouldn't carry Adult Only games," Keigwin said. The game's rating was changed to Adults Only briefly but the Mature rating was restored after Take-Two removed the offending material. According to the Entertainment Software Rating Board's website, the board assigned no Adult Only game ratings in 2011 and only 9 percent of the videos rated received a Mature rating.

Eliiot Mizrachi, a spokesman for the rating board, said, "Retailers generally do not sell AO-rated games and consoles choose not to license them for their systems. Given these circumstances, games that are initially assigned an AO rating are typically revised and resubmitted with the goal of obtaining an Mature rating instead."

Steyer said if laws can't be passed to keep violent games out of the hand of minors and game makers refuse to self-regulate then the Federal Trade Commission should consider regulating the sales and marketing practices of video games.

"Why are they advertising violent video games such as 'Call of Duty' during football games when my kids are watching?" Steyer asks.

Steyer also pointed to a story published in the New York Times in December. According to the article, when Electronic Arts was preparing to market the latest version of its top-selling "Medal of Honor Warfighter," it created a Web site on which it promoted the manufacturers of the guns and knives depicted in the game. The article also noted that "Call of Duty: Black Ops II" features models of weapons made by Barrett and Browning.